A Navajo Code Talker remembers fighting with the Marines in the South Pacific during World War II.

Thomas H. Begay, Tsi’ najinii and Ashiihi Clans, was a member of the 5th Marine Division and saw combat on Hawai`i, Enewetak Atoll, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and Iwo Jima.
We were disciplined....I learned to survive combat. The first hour, I was wit...

Historian Marc Simmons sketches the life of Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, poet-historian of the Spanish conquest.

Captain Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá published an epic poem in 1610. Written in classical style, it was fashioned in imitation of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. The poem bore the rather colorless name, Historia de la Nueva Mexico.
Villagrá is...

Apache Eugene Chihuahua remembers what life was like when the US imprisoned his people at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The Comanches, Kiowas, and Kiowa-Apaches hauled us and our handful of possessions to Cache Creek. What blankets and other things we’d put in the baggage cars were destroyed. So we set to work to make brush shelters the old way. Where saplings grew ...

The village leaders and the people were always thinking about how they might get rid of the Castillas—that’s what they called the Spanish. Then one time they got word from the Eastern Pueblos that some kind of uprising was being planned. They sen...

During World War II, many Navajos serving in the Marine Corps worked as code talkers, using a code in the Navajo language that the Japanese forces could not break for relaying information between US troops.

Although the United States government finally granted citizenship to Native Americans in 1924, the states of New Mexico and Arizona denied native people the right to vote until 1948. Nevertheless, during World War I (1917-1919) many Native Americans,...

A contemporary reflection on Mangas Coloradas and how the Apaches encountered General Kearneys Army in 1846.

In 1846 General Kearney's Army of the West traveled the length of the Gila River on the way to the conquest of California, part of the American government's self-made Mexican War. Lt. William Emory was the scribe and natural historian of the party. K...

A poem by a bugler in the 32nd Michigan Infantry, which served on the US-Mexico border in 1916.

I’ve done my bit on the border
I wish I was in God’s country again
I’ve had my fill of the border
Of Greasers and border men
I’ve eaten the dirt of Texas
I’ve drank of the Rio Grande
I’ve grubbed mesquite in the cursed heat
(The Lo...

A description of the Narváez expedition in 1527; how Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors struggled to cross North America.

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-c.1557) was born into a noble family near Seville, Spain. The name Cabeza de Vaca (Cow's Head) came from an ancestor who played a role in a victorious battle of Spain against the Moors in 1212. The ancestor was a s...